At the Federation Penal Colony in New Zealand, Janeway recruited Tom Paris – former Starfleet officer, short-term member of the Maquis, and son of AdmiralOwen Paris – whose piloting skills and knowledge of the Badlands were considered essential for the mission. Reluctantly, Paris agreed to be brought on board as an "observer." After leaving space station Deep Space 9 and entering the Badlands, Voyager was swept 75,000 light years into the Delta Quadrant where it also discovered Chakotay's missing Maquis vessel – the Val Jean – which had experienced a similar fate. (VOY: "Caretaker")

Voyager embarks on its journeey

Several crew members were killed during Voyager's violent hurtle into the Delta Quadrant, including the First Officer, Lieutenant CommanderCavit; the helmsman, LieutenantStadi; the chief engineer; the transporter chief; and the entire medical staff, including the chief medical officer. Furthermore, crew members of both vessels were abducted upon their arrival and subjected to painful three-day medical examinations conducted by an entity known as the "Caretaker". The Caretaker, a sporocystian lifeform who belonged to a race called the Nacene, was dying and in search of a suitable mate so his offspring could continue to provide for a species called the Ocampa after his death. He felt an obligation to the Ocampa as many years ago his race of explorers from a distant galaxy was responsible for the destruction of their planet's atmosphere, which in turn forced the Ocampa to move below ground. The Caretaker created underground hospitable areas for the Ocampa and completely provided for them.

Unable to find a compatible mate in any of Voyager's or the Val Jean's crew, however, he returned them to their respective ships. Two of the crew members – B'Elanna Torres and Harry Kim – became ill after the experiments, and were sent by the Caretaker to the Ocampa homeworld for care and medical treatment. Realizing the perilous state of their situation, Janeway and Chakotay decided to put aside their differences in order to locate their missing crew and then find a way to return home.

En route to Ocampa, the two ships encountered a Talaxian freighter manned by Neelix who, in exchange for water, agreed to help retrieve the missing crew. Both were eventually rescued and treated by Voyager's EMH. The Caretaker's condition continued to deteriorate, however, rendering him unable to send the two ships back to the Alpha Quadrant. He died a short time later. Although Lieutenant Tuvok believed he could activate the system that could send Voyager back, that would have meant potentially leaving the technology in the hands of a hostile native species, the Kazon-Ogla, whose malevolent use of the system would have threatened the existence of the Ocampa.

The USS Voyager dwarfed by the Caretaker's array

Instead of allowing the Kazon to seize the Caretaker's advanced technology and harm the peaceful Ocampa, Captain Janeway made the decision to destroy the Caretaker's array. She ordered two tricobalt devices, armed with a yield of 20,000 tera-cochranes, fired at the array, which destroyed it. This decision left Voyager stranded in the Delta Quadrant. After the destruction of the Val Jean during a battle with the Kazon, the Starfleet and Maquis crew were forced to merge for their projected 75-year journey home. (VOY: "Caretaker", "Relativity")

Voyager officially lost contact with Starfleet on stardate 48307.5. Because the Val Jean was destroyed in a battle against the Kazon, its entire surviving crew transferred to Voyager to embark on the journey home. Several key positions aboard the vessel, left vacant by heavy casualties, were filled by the new Maquis crew. Chakotay became Voyager's first officer, and B'Elanna Torres, despite a rocky relationship with then-acting chief engineer LieutenantJoe Carey, became the new chief engineer. With no surviving medical staff, the EMH became the chief (and only) medical officer. His design parameters included a maximum operating time of 1,500 hours, but the engineering staff eventually upgraded his program sufficiently to overcome this hindrance. (VOY: "Caretaker", "Parallax", "Eye of the Needle", "The Swarm")

The destruction of the Caretaker's array, along with Captain Janeway's decision to withhold sharing any of Voyager's technology – in accordance with the Prime Directive – left the ship in poor standing with the Kazon who were desperately seeking to get their hands on some of the advanced Starfleet technology. To make matters worse, several Voyager crew members such as Seska and Michael Jonas – both former Maquis – did not agree with following Starfleet principles and directives, believing them to be not worth making an enemy of the Kazon and thus delaying and endangering their journey home. (VOY: "State of Flux")

In 2371, in an elaborate deception that involved secretly transferring replicator technology to the Kazon, Seska defected to the Kazon-Nistrim sect.

Much to the surprise of her former Maquis crew-mates – in particular Chakotay who had also been romantically involved with Seska – The Doctor discovered that she was in fact a Cardassian spy, surgically altered to appear Bajoran, assigned to infiltrate Chakotay's Maquis cell.

After fleeing the ship and joining the Kazon-Nistrim, Seska immediately began to reassert her Cardassian physiology and began supplying them with information about Voyager and training them in Cardassian battle tactics. Another crew member, Michael Jonas, remained on Voyager and started clandestinely supplying information to the Kazon-Nistrim sometime in 2372, before he was eventually discovered by Tom Paris and Neelix after a dangerous sting operation and killed when he attempted to sabotage the ship's weapons. (VOY: "State of Flux", "Maneuvers", "Basics, Part I")

The year 2372 was marked by several devastating attacks by the Kazon. At one point Voyager was attacked four times in two weeks alone, losing three crewmembers and lowering morale. Commander Chakotay suggested forming an alliance with a few of the Kazon sects to ensure Voyager's safety through the region. A reluctant Captain Janeway eventually agreed to a meeting. The attempted collaboration, however, proved to be an almost futile mistake, making it impossible for Voyager to enter into any meaningful alliances with any of the Kazon sects. Hostilities between Voyager and the Kazon continued throughout the year. (VOY: "Alliances")

At the end of the year, Voyager received a message from Seska saying that she had given birth to Chakotay's son and that the child was in danger of becoming a slave to the Kazon. The crew was immediately suspicious that Seska was luring Voyager into a trap, but rallied behind Chakotay and his responsibility to his son. After recovering Tierna, one of Seska's aids, Voyager set a course toward Kazon territory. Unfortunately the crew's initial skepticism proved to be correct: Seska's message was a setup, and during the ensuing battle, Voyager was captured and the crew was marooned on Hanon IV - a desolate planet in an early stage of its evolution. (VOY: "Basics, Part I")

Tom Paris had managed to escape the ship in a shuttle and reach a nearby Talaxian colony. With the help of the Talaxians, The Doctor, and Lon Suder, who had been mistakenly left behind during the capture of Voyager, Paris and the Talaxians were able to retake Voyager and rescue the crew on Hanon IV at the end of 2372. Seska was killed during the conflict, and her child was later found to be MajeCulluh's, Culluh taking the child with him. Voyager left Kazon space a short time later when it went to maxium warp while in a nearby nebula in 2373. (VOY: "Basics, Part II")

Voyager had earned a reputation in the 29th century for being involved in a number of temporal incidents. One Starfleet officer of the era made note of how often the vessel showed up on the USS Relativity's temporal sensors; the vessel's captain was even driven to madness due to Voyager's incursions.

In 2371, Voyager became trapped in a quantum singularity while responding to a distress call. It was discovered that the distress call had actually been sent by Voyager herself, and the crew was trying to rescue a time-delayed "reflection" of themselves. (VOY: "Parallax")

Tuvok, Captain Janeway, and B'Elanna Torres observe the temporal anomalies on the ship

Later that year, a wormhole leading to the Alpha Quadrant was discovered. While it was quickly found to be in an advanced state of decay and not suitable for travel, the crew was able to make contact with a Romulan ship on the other side. After finding a way of transporting the Romulan captain to Voyager, it was discovered that the Alpha Quadrant end of the wormhole was set twenty years in the past. The Romulan captain, Telek R'Mor, agreed to inform Starfleet of Voyager's location in 2371, but passed away in 2367, four years before he would have delivered the crew's messages. (VOY: "Eye of the Needle")

A short time later, a future version of Kes arrived on Voyager, with the intent of handing the crew over to the Vidiians. During the ambush Kes helped set up, she was found trying to leave Voyager with her younger self and forced Captain Janeway to kill her. The younger Kes recorded a message to be played at some point in the future to make sure that the incident did not repeat itself. (VOY: "Fury")

In 2373, Voyager was attacked by a 29th century Federation vessel under the command of CaptainBraxton. The ensuing battle led Voyager and the time ship to be pulled into the 20th century, with Voyager arriving in orbit of Earth in 1996, and Braxton arriving approximately thirty years earlier. During this time, Voyager's EMH acquired the mobile emitter that allowed him to exist outside of just sickbay and the holodeck which were equipped with holo-emitters. Another version of Braxton detected Voyager in 1996 and returned them to the 24th century Delta Quadrant. (VOY: "Future's End", "Future's End, Part II")

The Delta Flyer

While testing Voyager's newly-completed quantum slipstream drive in 2375, Seven of Nine received a set of phase corrections through her Borg implants. Instead of stabilizing the slipstream, however, they collapsed it. Harry Kim, who was ahead of Voyager in the Delta Flyer mapping the threshold, insisted that he did not send the message. Embedded in the transmission received by Seven was a Starfleet security code belonging to Harry Kim. In it was a message from an older version of himself telling the younger Kim that he had made a mistake fifteen years prior that cost the lives of the Voyager crew, and that if he was seeing the message then "all of that has changed." (VOY: "Timeless")

One of the more complex temporal incidents encountered by the Voyager crew came in late 2375. Voyager began experiencing numerous temporal paradoxes throughout the ship, with time passing more quickly in certain areas and slowing down in others. It was estimated that the temporal distortions would destroy the ship in a matter of hours. A few seconds before the explosion, two Starfleet officers from the future recovered Seven of Nine. She had been drafted by Captain Braxton and Lieutenant Ducane of the timeship USS Relativity to prevent the explosion and capture the individual responsible for Voyager's destruction. After traveling through various points in Voyager's history, the culprit was revealed to be a future version of Braxton, intent on taking revenge on Voyager for being responsible for so many temporal incursions that caused the need for him to go into rehabilitation a second time. Although Braxton was captured, several temporal paradoxes were created during the incident, such as Captain Janeway and Tuvok meeting Seven in 2372 instead of 2374. Lieutenant Ducane determined it necessary to "clean up" the timeline, and because Seven of Nine was unable to make any further time jumps without injuring herself, Captain Janeway was enlisted. She successfully captured Braxton seconds after initially setting foot on Voyager, preventing the paradoxes. Afterwords, Ducane decided not to wipe Seven and Janeway's memories of the events, but left them with orders to remember the Temporal Prime Directive and not to discuss the experience with anyone. (VOY: "Relativity")

In 2377, a temporal anomaly emitted a surge of energy that split Voyager into multiple time periods throughout the ship. The crew from various periods of the vessel's history were able to restore Voyager to temporal sync. Only Commander Chakotay retained memory of these events as the timeline had been reset to his time period, allowing him to prevent the energy surge. (VOY: "Shattered")

On two occasions, during their journey through the Delta Quadrant, Voyager and its crew duplicated.

Duplicate Voyagers

The first occasion was in 2372 when, in an attempt to avoid going through Vidiian territory, the crew head into a plasma drift in an effort to escape the Vidiians. The plan was a success, but as Voyager was leaving the plasma drift the ship was hit repeatedly by a series of proton bursts seemingly out of nowhere that caused heavy damage to the ship and in the process the loss of Harry Kim and EnsignSamantha Wildman's newborn child, Kim being sucked out of the ship through a hull breach while the infant died to various medical complications. It was discovered that the bursts where coming from another Voyager occupying the same point in space as the now damaged Voyager due to a spatial scission. The intact Voyager was later destroyed by its self-destruct after it was boarded by Vidiians. Before its destruction however, its Harry Kim and the newborn of Samantha Wildman- which had come through her birth safe and healthy- were transferred to the damaged Voyager. (VOY: "Deadlock")

On another occasion in 2374 a bio-mimetic lifeform, known as the Silver Blood, was discovered on a Y class planet when the crew where searching for sources of deuterium. After duplicating Tom Paris and Harry Kim, the crew discover the Silver Blood was a sentient lifeform. In exchange for letting Voyager go, along with a supply of deuterium, the crew gave their DNA so they could be copied. (VOY: "Demon")

However, by 2375 the Silver Blood Voyager crew had replicated their own Voyager. This crew attempted to journey back to the Alpha Quadrant as well, oblivious to their true origins. It was not until the use of an enhanced warp drive that they learned who they really were. The new warp drive was harmful to them and ultimately led to the destruction of the Silver Blood Voyager and its crew. (VOY: "Course: Oblivion")

A Borg skeleton found by Voyager, signaling their proximity to Borg space

Although the Delta Quadrant remained mostly unexplored by the latter half of the 24th century, one thing that was known about the region was that it was home to the Borg. The Voyager crew knew the day would come when they would come face to face with the Collective.

Voyager finally entered Borg space at the end of the year, however, instead of facing assimilation, the crew found themselves on the sidelines of a brutal war between the Collective and an extra-dimensional alien species known only by their Borg designation of Species 8472. After determining that Species 8472 represented a significant threat to all life in the Milky Way Galaxy, Captain Janeway decided to form an unprecedented alliance with the Borg in order to drive the aliens back into their realm. In exchange for safe passage through Borg space, Janeway agreed to help the Collective construct a weapon capable of defeating the invading aliens. The Borg assigned a representative, Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01, to work with the Voyager crew directly.

Following the successful final confrontation with Species 8472 in their native realm, the Borg betrayed Voyager and attempted to assimilate the vessel and its crew through Seven of Nine. The crew had prepared for this eventuality and managed to disable the drone. Seven of Nine was permanently severed from the Collective and joined the Voyager crew for the remainder of their journey. (VOY: "Scorpion", "Scorpion, Part II")

A Borg probe attacks; Voyager defends itself

The next significant encounter with the Borg came in 2375, when Voyager was attacked by a small Borg probe. Captain Janeway intended only to disable the vessel and steal a transwarp coil, but ended up destroying it by accident when Harry Kim transported a photon torpedo into an area near the power matrix. After analyzing several recovered data nodes, the crew was able to conduct a successful raid of a damaged Borg sphere and get away with a working transwarp coil, although Seven of Nine was captured during the operation. An away team led by Janeway was eventually able to recover her. Using the coil, Voyager was able to shorten its journey home by several years before the coil burned out. (VOY: "Dark Frontier")

In 2376, another derelict cube was found where all the adult drones had been killed by a virus. The Voyager crew was able to liberate four adolescent drones, Icheb, Mezoti, and the twins Rebi and Azan, who had been spared the ultimate fate of the virus. The twins were eventually returned to their people, who also agreed to give Mezoti a home, however Icheb remained with Voyager throughout the remainder of its journey and intended to apply to Starfleet Academy. (VOY: "Collective", "Imperfection", "Endgame")

In 2377, the Borg became aware of Unimatrix Zero. The Borg Queen immediately began to research a way to destroy the realm, believing it to be a threat to the Collective. The drones occupying Unimatrix Zero found a way to contact Seven of Nine, who had previously been able to access the region during her time as drone, and through she was able to convince Captain Janeway to assist them. Janeway, Tuvok, and Torres were inoculated with a neural suppressant and allowed to be physically assimilated in order to plant a virus into the Collective. The virus liberated the drones of Unimatrix Zero from the hive mind, allowing a resistance movement to form against the Borg. (VOY: "Unimatrix Zero", "Unimatrix Zero, Part II")

Voyager had been declared "officially lost" by 2373. Fourteen months later, Seven of Nine detected a large communications network with a sensor range capable of reaching the outskirts of the Alpha Quadrant. A Federation vessel was detected in range of one of the farthest relay stations, and in lieu of failed attempts to contact the vessel via standard hails, The Doctor was transmitted to make contact, since his program would not degrade in transit.

Upon boarding the USS Prometheus, The Doctor found the crew dead and the ship in the hands of the Romulan military. With the help of the Prometheus' EMH, The Doctor was able to return the vessel to Starfleet custody and finally report on Voyager's situation. He told Starfleet Command everything that had happened to the Voyager crew and was returned to the vessel with a message for the crew: "You are no longer alone." (VOY: "Message in a Bottle")

Starfleet began the Pathfinder Project, a division of Starfleet with the goal of establishing contact with Voyager and finding a way to bring the lost vessel home. The team was led by Commander Peter Harkins and overseen by AdmiralOwen Paris, but the driving force behind the project was LieutenantReginald Barclay, formerly of the USS Enterprise. Thanks to Barclay's efforts, first contact with Voyager was established in late 2376 and regular contact was maintained for the duration of the vessel's journey. The project revolutionized long-range communications; major milestones included the ability to send monthly transmissions and eventually establish two-way live visual communication at a distance of 30,000 light years, even if only for eleven minutes a day. (VOY: "Pathfinder", "Life Line", "Author, Author")

In 2375, Voyager responded to a Federation distress call from the starship USS Equinox commanded by CaptainRudolph Ransom. The vessel had been stranded in the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker as well, and had been suffering attacks by an unknown nucleogenic lifeform. Unknown to the Voyager crew, the Equinox crew had been performing illegal experiments on the aliens in an effort to enhance their warp drive and return home sooner. Upon discovering this, Captain Janeway had the Equinox crew arrested, but they soon escaped. Janeway began a manhunt for Ransom, much to the dissatisfaction of Chakotay, who believed that Janeway was crossing the line. He convinced her to negotiate a cease fire with the aliens, but was relieved of duty for opposing her harsh attitude towards Ransom. Eventually Voyager caught up with the Equinox. Ransom, in a last minute change of heart, decided to surrender to Janeway. Unfortunately, his first officer, Lieutenant Maxwell Burke, had other ideas, and relieved his captain of duty. Ransom and chief engineer EnsignMarla Gilmore managed to beam the Equinox personnel to Voyager, but were unable to save Burke and the rest of the bridge crew. After dropping the shields around the warp core, the aliens caused a warp core breach, destroying the Equinox.

The five surviving Equinox crew members were stripped of rank and ordered to serve as crewmen aboard Voyager, under close supervision with limited privileges. (VOY: "Equinox", "Equinox, Part II")

In 2378, Voyager was given its first official assignment since its entrapment in the Delta Quadrant seven years earlier. Captain Janeway's orders were to locate and retrieve an old Earth space-probe, Friendship 1, that was launched in 2067 with the directive of contacting new species. Starfleet had lost contact with the probe around 2248 but its last known location and heading had projected the probe to be somewhere near Voyager's location.

The probe was located on a highly irradiated world whose inhabitants had taken advantage of the information contained in the probe's database, with disastrous results. The survivors held the Voyager crew responsible for the current condition of their planet and people, and killed Lieutenant Joe Carey during a hostage situation that arose when an away team was sent to retrieve the probe. After rescuing the away team and repairing the damage to the planet's atmosphere, Voyager took the probe's remains into its cargo bay and resumed a course for the Alpha Quadrant. (VOY: "Friendship One")

Over the course of Voyager's journey throughout the Delta Quadrant, the vessel encountered many technologies and anomalies that shortened the vessel's return to the Alpha Quadrant.

In 2374, following the conclusion of the war between the Borg and Species 8472, Kes began to experience after effects following her communications with the aliens. She began evolving towards a higher state of being, but the process proved to be dangerous to Voyager so she decided to leave to protect the ship. As her final gift to the Voyager crew, Kes propelled the ship over 9,500 light years closer to Earth, eliminating ten years off the crew's journey. (VOY: "The Gift")

At the end of that year, Voyager encountered the USS Dauntless, a vessel allegedly sent by Starfleet Command to bring the Voyager crew home. In reality, the Dauntless was part of an elaborate trap laid out by the alien Arturis to exact revenge on Captain Janeway, for what he saw as her role in the Borg's assimilation of his world. The Dauntless was equipped with a quantum slipstream drive, a highly advanced propulsion system similar to Borg transwarp conduits. Lieutenant Torres was able to modify Voyager to be able to make use of this technology temporarily in order to rescue Captain Janeway and Seven of Nine from Arturis aboard the Dauntless. After their rescue, Voyager was able go 300 light years closer to the Alpha Quadrant before it collapsed. Several months later, the crew revisited this technology and were able to travel another 10,000 light years before the slipstream dispersed. The technology was deemed too dangerous for use after this occurrence and was dismantled. (VOY: "Hope and Fear", "Timeless")

In early 2375, Voyager entered an area of space known as the Void. The region contained no star systems and high levels of theta radiation did not allow light from any stars beyond the area to be seen from within. A spatial vortex leading to the other side of this region cut two years and 2,500 light years off of Voyager's journey. (VOY: "Night")

Captain Janeway estimated that avoiding conflicts with the Borg added two years onto the crew's journey. However, in mid-2375, the crew stole a transwarp coil from a Borg sphere that cut fifteen years off Voyager's trip home. (VOY: "Dark Frontier")

In 2378, high levels of neutrino emissions consistent with wormholes were detected inside a nebula. Voyager immediately set a course, only to discover it overrun with Borg. Captain Janeway intended to continue the journey home by conventional means, until a future version of the captain from the year 2404 arrived. This Admiral Janeway provided Voyager with advanced weapons (transphasic torpedoes) and ablative generators that proved highly resistant to Borg weaponry.

With this new technology, Voyager returned to the nebula in force. However, upon the discovery of a Borg transwarp hub at the center of the nebula, Captain Janeway withdrew and immediately began plans to destroy it. Admiral Janeway at first objected to this but a change of heart encouraged her to cooperate with her younger self. The plan called for Admiral Janeway to be assimilated by the Borg Queen herself. The admiral was carrying a neurolytic pathogen, which immediately infected the Queen and caused her to lose control of the transwarp hub's manifold shielding, allowing Voyager to destroy the hub from the inside. The pathogen continued to spread throughout the Collective, resulting in the destruction of Unimatrix 01 and the death of the Queen and Admiral Janeway. Unfortunately, a single Borg sphere that was still in contact with the Borg Queen before her death intercepted Voyager while traveling through the collapsing hub. After allowing Voyager to be brought inside the sphere, Tuvok fired a transphasic torpedo, destroying the sphere as Voyager emerged victorious in front of a Federation fleet in the Alpha Quadrant less than a light year from Earth. The excited fleet then escorted Voyager the rest of the short distance to Earth.

Voyager spent a total of seven years in the Delta Quadrant before returning to Federation space. The original estimate of the time needed for the return trip had been 75 years but intervention by numerous alien races, time travel, spatial anomalies, and the acquisition of new technologies considerably shortened the journey. (VOY: "Endgame")

With fifteen decks, a length of 343 meters, a crew complement capacity of approximately 160, and weighing in at 700,000 metric tons, Voyager was only about half the size of the Galaxy-class starships introduced in the 2350s. However, what the Intrepid-class starship lacked in physical size she made up for with technological advancements: Voyager boasted some of the most advanced sensor equipment in the Federation fleet and was capable of reaching a sustainable cruise velocity of warp factor 9.975. She was further equipped with bio-neural circuitry that contained gel-packs with bio-neural cells that organized information more efficiently and sped up response time. Its computer processor was capable of simultaneous access to 47 million data channels, transluminal processing at 575 trillion calculations per nanosecond and operational temperature margins from 10 Kelvin to 1,790 Kelvin. (VOY: "Caretaker", "Phage", "Concerning Flight")

Shortly before the vessel's return to the Alpha Quadrant in 2378, Voyager was upgraded with ablative generators and transphasic torpedoes, both of which were brought back in time by a future version of Kathryn Janeway from the year 2404. These new systems drastically increased Voyager's combat capabilities against the Borg; Borg weapons had a difficult time penetrating the hull armor and entire Borg cubes were destroyed with only one or two transphasic torpedoes each. (VOY: "Endgame")

Following Captain Janeway's brief alliance with the Borg in 2373-74, Voyager gained access to a large amount of Borg technology. During this alliance, the Borg equipped Voyager with modified torpedoes which were armed with collaboratively modified nanoprobes capable of destroying a Species 8472 bio-ship with a single shot. The modifications the Borg made to the power relays on Deck 8 were allowed to remain intact after B'Elanna Torres noted that they worked better with the Borg improvements. Additionally, an astrometrics lab was constructed with Borg-enhanced sensors by the former drone, Seven of Nine, and Ensign Harry Kim. A 29th century Borg drone encountered in 2375 was able to further enhance Voyager's defensive systems, albeit in a limited manner, in order to escape from an attacking Borg sphere. Voyager's engines were also compatible with Borg transwarp technology: in 2375 a transwarp coil was used to cut fifteen years off of their journey back to Earth. (VOY: "Scorpion, Part II", "Year of Hell", "Drone", "Dark Frontier")

In 2374, Ensign Harry Kim and Seven of Nine collaborated to construct Voyager's astrometrics lab. The lab's sensors measured the radiative flux of up to three billion stars simultaneously, and the computer would then calculate Voyager's position relative to the center of the galaxy, making the stellar mapping technology ten times more accurate than what the vessel had been using previously. This new technology was first used to calculate a new route to the Alpha Quadrant that would eliminate five years from Voyager's journey home. The astrometrics lab was located on deck 8. (VOY: "Year of Hell")

Voyager was launched with a crew complement of 141 stable members, to which was added Tom Paris and probably other new crewmembers specialized to fulfill the first mission in the Badlands, since Captain Janeway says "I started with 153 crew and lost my doctor". (VOY: "Shattered") Her initial short assignment did not call for a counselor to be assigned. With the addition of the Maquis along with Neelix and Kes the crew complement rose to 152 by end of Voyager's first year in the Delta Quadrant. (VOY: "The 37's")

Although Commander Chakotay believed that Voyager could only operate effectively with a crew of at least one hundred, various circumstances have shown this, at least temporarily, to not be the case. When circumstances required it, the ship has been able to operate effectively with even a single crew member. In 2374, Seven of Nine was forced to maintain the vessel alone for several days while the crew was in stasis while passing through a nebula. Although she did have The Doctor for assistance for the first couple of weeks, eventually the nebula caused his program to go offline. In 2377, The Doctor as the Emergency Command Hologram was able to engage several Quarren patrol ships while the crew was brainwashed into working for various Quarren employers on their homeworld, although he was subsequently forced to retreat to a nebula to repair the damage the ship had sustained – including the loss of life support – until assistance arrived in the form of the Delta Flyer and Chakotay, Harry Kim, and Neelix, who had been away on a diplomatic mission when the ship was attacked. (VOY: "The 37's", "Elogium", "One", "Workforce", "Workforce, Part II")

With the destruction of the Val Jean during their first days in the Delta Quadrant, Starfleet and Maquis crew members were first forced to cooperate with one another to get their missing crew members back and then to merge aboard Voyager to embark on their decades long journey home. Captain Janeway granted the Maquis provisional field commissions with many filling the roles left vacant by the vessels losses in the initial transfer to the Delta Quadrant. Of the several key positions on Voyager that were filled by former Maquis crew members, that of first officer was filled by Chakotay and the position of chief engineer went to B'Elanna Torres. By 2377, about one quarter of Voyager's crew consisted of former Maquis members.

Early in the ship's journey, Lieutenant Tuvok believed that with so many Maquis on board there was a serious risk of mutiny and so designed a holodeck training program to prepare for such an event. Despite Tuvok's concerns, however, the opposite proved to be the case and the two crews, for the most part, integrated well and so he deleted the program. When it was accidently uncovered in 2373, it was treated as entertainment and none of the Maquis took offense at the subject matter, even after Tuvok revealed the impetus behind it.

Although most of the Maquis crew members integrated well into a Starfleet command structure, some had more difficulty; this caused Tuvok to organize a "boot camp" to get the insubordinate Maquis in line and familiar with Starfleet protocols. (VOY: "Learning Curve")

News of the Maquis' slaughter at the hands of the Dominion in 2373 took a heavy emotional toll on many of the former Val Jean crew, especially in the case of B'Elanna Torres, who fell into a deep emotional chasm over the death of her Maquis companions and engaged in some rather strange and even self-destructive behavior that began to concern the crew. (VOY: "Hunters", "Extreme Risk")

The first series bible for Star Trek: Voyager describes the starship Voyager as being "smaller, sleeker and more advanced than the USS Enterprise-D. It holds a crew of some two hundred, and does not have families on board."

Ronald D. Moore felt that, as the setting for a Star Trek series, Voyager wasn't sufficiently removed from the aesthetic of Star Trek: The Next Generation and the Enterprise-D. During a couple of months in which he was hired to write for the series, Moore postulated that Voyager should undergo drastic changes while it was journeying home. "I kept saying, 'The ship should be unrecognizable as a starship by the time it gets home,' that by the time it got home, it should have had its own culture, its own customs, and the ship should have been, like, customized for everybody and for many purposes [...] It just wouldn't look like a starship any more. I couldn't sell anybody on that, though." ("Relics" audio commentary, TNG Season 6 Blu-ray)

One idea which Michael Okuda and others discussed, early in the series run of Star Trek: Voyager, was that the starship Voyager might have rows of plants growing in hydroponic gardens throughout the ship. This notion was motivated by the fact Voyager was so distant from the Alpha Quadrant and because the vessel's systems might fail. Though the regular writing staff or the producers never fully embraced the concept, Okuda suspected having many hydroponic gardens aboard the ship would have been fun. Ron Moore agreed, saying it was among the ideas he wanted when he was assigned to write for the series. ("Relics" audio commentary, TNG Season 6 Blu-ray)

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In the novel series, looking at events after Voyager returns from the Delta Quadrant, all characters are promoted after their return to the Alpha Quadrant, with Chakotay becoming Voyager's new captain, Tom Paris his first officer, and Harry Kim the new chief of security. Captain Afsarah Eden briefly takes command of Voyager after Janeway is assimilated and killed during a Borg assault on Earth in Before Dishonor and Chakotay resigns in grief, but he returns to take command of Voyager in time to participate in "Project: Full Circle", where Voyager returns to the Delta Quadrant with a fleet of other ships using Starfleet's perfected Quantum slipstream drive. Janeway resumes command of the fleet when she is resurrected by Q's son and Kes in the novel The Eternal Tide.

The USS Voyager makes several appearances in the video game Star Trek Online. Set in the early 25th century about twenty to thirty years after Voyager's return from the Delta Quadrant, Voyager is under the command of now-Rear Admiral Lower Half Tuvok and assists the player in two missions, including responding to a large-scale attack by Species 8472 on the Earth Spacedock and Qo'noS.